


crowns of silver (we are//samurai country)

by Liatheus



Category: Gintama
Genre: Character Study, Found Family Feels, Gen, Gintama Season Fanfiction Festival 2018, Philosophical Discussions, more nature metaphors than i have trees in my backyard probably, yorozuya - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-13 14:03:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12985623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liatheus/pseuds/Liatheus
Summary: Drabbles written for the Gintama Season Fanfiction Festival 2018i.crow's nest: a chance encounter down a lonely road (Katsura Kotarou & Oboro)ii.over the offing: there's the sun, the sea, the cloud, and one critter (Sadaharu-centric)





	1. crow's nest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Prompts 1: Heaven & Earth // two characters who have never interacted in canon meet
> 
> Scene takes place some time between the Farewell Shinsengumi Arc and the Rakuyou Arc. 
> 
> Experimenting with a different narrative voice/style here; hopefully it's still enjoyable!

The ground still smells like ash.

Perhaps it is merely the bothersome lingering of a memory refusing to be buried, but the ground still smells like ash. There’s nothing of char and grey dusting over the ground though, nothing more than dry earth and gravel to scratch the worn soles of passing feet.

It could hardly be expected of such passersby to know that a school once stood there, the wood and straw and clay that formed its walls and floors and roof drifted away speck by tiny speck with the wind. Only the ruins of a gate, with its frame flaking and splintered and roof tilting dangerously off to the side, hint to the fact that something ever existed on that now barren patch of land at all. Indeed, those who came passing by—only ever lost travellers and farmers, whose inattentive eyes and wandering feet turn them down long forgotten roads—hardly spare a glance towards the field of stone and dirt, though their steps unconsciously quicken when their noses tickle with the ghost scent of smoke and flame.

It is, then, of great remark to the trees still lining the empty ground, their branches patterned with the great tragedies of the decades, roots watered with the black taste of soot, when a man slips off the beaten road, walks steadily through the half-crumbled gate, and comes to a stop right in the middle of the field of stone and grey.

Should time have thought it agreeable to rewind itself right then, the man would have found himself right at the threshold of a classroom, shoji screens opened wide to let in sunlight warmth, gold-white rays silken cloaks sliding over the cheeks and shoulders of dozy-bright students.

He would have heard the quiet turns of thin pages, the soft bristle of brushes passing through ink and over paper, the low chorus of breaths and sighs and sleepy hums beneath a melody of literature and philosophy.

He would have meet a gentle smile, pride and joy etched in its curve, and been welcomed in with a time-softened, open hand.

As it is, the man stands merely in the middle of a plot of empty land, his large straw hat shading the broad sweep of his shoulders and obscuring his face from view. Under the shimmer-haze of the sun, the long line of his white robe blurs into the eggshell world around him, a soft distortion that makes him appear more ghost than man. Thus he stands in silence, unmoving, only the sky, the trees, and phantoms for his company.

He stands so long, the trees wonder if he wants to become one of them, rooted to dirt and ash.  

He stands so long, that then comes another, scraping down the old dusty road on sandals browned with earth and grit.  

The trees clamour in their roots—never has there been more than one set of footsteps passing by within a single cycle of the sun—but it is a windless day, and their leaves do not show their excitement. Oh but how they tremble, imperceptible to those human eyes that only look down to the world beneath their feet, when too this unknown traveller turns off the lonely path, crosses under the slanted gate, so happy to serve its purpose well for the first time in over a decade, and comes to a stop beside the first.

“Excuse me,” says the newcomer to the man in white, “I didn’t expect to see anyone along this road. I hope I am not intruding?”

There is a half moment of silence where the trees lean forward, eager and excited. How they have missed the music of the human tongue, those utterances that drip as morning dew and honey! for the newcomer speaks with dulcet tones flowing smooth like water over polished stone, in the way of the old Masters whose bodies have long turned to flower and grass.

The newcomer too is dressed in their likeness, centuries of tradition and spiritual awakening draped over his shoulder in a fall of deep brilliant blue, bright as the sky at morning, dark as the sky at night. The gulls sing often of this colour, this lapis lazuli floating over wave and foam to reach them from distant seas. And yet from beneath his woven hat, ink black hair spills down pale neck and over shoulder, long strands tied off with a white cord and dangling just above his heart.

The man in white lifts dark-rimmed eyes to the man in blue and regards him with a measured, shadowed gaze.

“If we have met here today, it is because fate has decreed it so,” he says, and his voice is smouldering like smoke, coarse like jagged rock.  

The man in blue looks back to the white in white, then turns and gestures to the trees around them.

“I am merely a humble traveller who followed a lonely bird down a lonely road,” he says, tilting his face up to the sky as if in search of his winged guide.

Following the other’s gaze, the man in white too looks upwards; the sky looks back down upon him, down upon the grey-silver of his hair, upon grey eyes duller than stone, upon a scar so thick and deep, it splits through his face like lightning. Long ago, there had been a little one here, a little one the old trees remember fondly for all the times he closed his dull, doozy eyes and slept in their many arms, so often that sometimes unaware birds would makes nests of his silver curls.

There is a difference of Heaven and Earth between that little one, and the man in white that stands before them now, a difference of earth and ash.

Silence and stillness settle over them, drifting down from the clouds, before the moment passes in a heavy draw of breath.

“Do you know what this place was?”

The question spoken is as quiet as the answer that comes, quiet enough that ghosts continue to sleep peacefully in their earthen beds.

“No”—but gold-brown eyes finally break their skyward gaze, falling to trace paths in the ground, recounting the steps from the classroom to the dojo, then up towards the kitchen, around to the library, all the way to the private study of the school’s old master, before they all returned to the earth in a blaze of time and fire—“though I’m sure it was a lovely place, full of brightness and laughter.”

“It was a place of demons,” says the man in white, but his words are not alike the birds migrating at the first touch of winter frost, flying with knowledge and conviction, “led by the most dangerous of all. He who sought to defy the Heavens, and was punished justly for his crimes.”

Both heads hang down now, the air heavy on their shoulders.

“Perhaps it was not so much defiance as a lack of guidance, and then a desire to forge his own path.” Polished stone, running water. “Even the Heavens can be clouded, after all, and blinded by their own brilliance, and forget to light the way. Wouldn’t it be better then, to call those who struggle without a guiding light not demons, but men?”

The drop of a stone in a pool of still water; who knows how far the ripples will travel?

“Man was not made to reach the Heavens.”

The man in blue lifts a hand to his chin thoughtfully, a low hum at his lips.

“I am a man, and like any mortal being that will one day perish, I merely wish to live—with what little time is granted me—fully, and die without regret, by the side of those who have willingly walked the long road with me.” He turns and smiles, eyes honey-warm. “Is that not what all men desire?”

“...Perhaps.”

The reflection of a ripple, and a rock floats to the surface, jagged edges smoothing out little by little.

Together, the two men walk back to the gate, their footsteps matching stride for stride in a lingering, deliberate stroll. Before they step back out onto the road, standing beneath the old gate’s slanting roof, the man in white asks a final question.

“You are different from the others. Why?”

A pause, calculating gleam beneath blades of dark, shimmering hair.

“A friend once told me to live beautifully until the end. There is no beauty in hatred. Revenge will not cleanse this country, not the souls who have lost everything fighting for it. There are wounds that only forgiveness can heal. Forgiveness of others, and of one’s own weaknesses.”

The man in white bows his head, a slow lowering of the chin that hides his scar once again under shadow.

“The Heavens do not forgive so easily.”

“Perhaps not,” the man in blue replies serenely, “but men can, and do.”

There is nothing left for either to say, and so the two men part, as travelling passersby so often do, moving in opposite directions down the unkept road.

Behind them, the trees whisper to each other, groping down twig and branch and trunk for memories coiled into their rings, for the recollection of a time past yet forever, the ghost of a boy with long black hair and gold-brown eyes, a not-yet-man of straw and scar and dull, lifeless eyes.

Behind them, time slows back down to a stop, caught once more within the echo of the giggle-shriek of childish laughter, and the jangle-clash of metal rings.

Behind them, the ground still smells like ash.

 

_fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have any questions at all about what's happening here, please don't hesitate to ask! I have a lot of feelings about Katsura and Oboro, and how they're the only of Shouyou's disciples who have never met face to face (also salt. lots and lots of salt. ahem.), so I'm always happy to talk (read: rant) about them!
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this one! See you in two weeks!


	2. over the offing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Prompt: Mascots
> 
> Short drabble inspired by learning that dogs only see the colours blue, yellow, and gray (the only reason I wrote Sadaharu over Elizabeth, lol).
> 
> _offing_ : the furthest part of the sea that can be seen from shore, or a point faraway from shore

Sadaharu meets the sun.

The sun is loud and tough and even though she tells him that her favourite colours to wear are orange and red, Sadaharu is sure that she is mistaken, because the sun is clearly yellow. She’s not as bright as the other sun, the one in the sky, but she’s still yellow.

She’s just as warm as the other sun though, and better even, because Sadaharu can play tackle with her and curl up with her at night.

(Plus she takes him to the park where all the pretty dog ladies go for walks and show off their pretty tricks.

The other sun could never help him with that kind of heat, arf.)

The sun comes with a cloud.

The cloud is a big, puffy, bright-dull-bright cloud, who floats around wherever the wind takes him, drifting this way and that and often right into people’s faces.

It’s a terrible habit, the sun tells him, because the pollution is disgusting these days, and who knows what he'll pick up, breathing in all that gross old man pervert air.

It doesn't seem to change the taste of his breath when he screams inside Sadaharu’s mouth though, so Sadaharu doesn't mind too much.

The sun and the cloud come with a pair of glasses.

Sadaharu likes to chew on them.

Under the pair of glasses, there is the sea. Sadaharu hasn’t seen the sea too often—the big, wide one that smells like fish and salt, and makes his fur wet and gritty when he runs into it—because they can’t afford to go to the beach very often, but Sadaharu knows the sea when he sees it.

Cool, calm, and soothing, until the weather changes and the sea rages and foams and spits.

Usually at the cloud, who just keeps floating wherever he is. Usually on the couch.

(Sadaharu is not allowed on the couch; sometimes he gets sad about that.)

The sun, the cloud, and the sea are his new world.

He loves them.

_He loves them._

He loves them even when the sun droops down and loses some of her bright light, even when the cloud becomes a thundercloud and brings with him a storm so fierce, it rains blood and metal, even when the sea turns blue, blue, blue (“Blue, blue, blue, bleeding out the bad, sad blues—cut your stinky heart out!” the sea once sang to him, rocking in time to the music ringing out from his headphones) and draws away like the salty sea at low tide, back into hidden depths, the taste of deep-running waters leaking out mist-fogged glasses.

Whether darkness, or storms, or the sea-salt of tears, he will weather them all, marching through the long hours of the night and keeping faith that the morning will come, peeking out over the horizon, and find them all together, sun over sea, cloud drifting by.

Even if the morning doesn’t come the way they expect it to—if the dawn heralds no more than the end of the world—it doesn't matter because he knows _his world_ will always be there—

They will always be right there with him, because the sun, the cloud, the sea, and one critter are more than enough to make up a whole world no sword or fist in the universe could ever cut and beat down.

They are his, and he will protect them with everything he has.

To the end of the world, and beyond. 

 

_fin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arf<3


End file.
